Wednesday, August 25, 2004

Dubya's security initiatives continue to protect Americans from threats from all quarters. Like, for instance, the threat that the text of standing Supreme Court rulings might lead them to distrust the government:

In one of the cases [brought by the ACLU], the government also censored more than a dozen seemingly innocuous passages from court filings on national security grounds, only to be overruled by the judge, according to ACLU documents.

Among the phrases originally redacted by the government was a quotation from a 1972 Supreme Court ruling: "The danger to political dissent is acute where the Government attempts to act under so vague a concept as the power to protect 'domestic security.' Given the difficulty of defining the domestic security interest, the danger of abuse in acting to protect that interest becomes apparent."

In fact, some of the material that they have submitted to the court is so sensitive, that even the plaintiffs in the case must be protected from it.

And their protection goes further:

Justice officials also excised language describing one of the plaintiffs: "provides clients with email accounts" and "provides clients with the ability to access the Internet." The identity of the company in question remains secret to the public.

Lest anyone conclude, wrongly, that if their ISP isn't the one that's suing, then their mail isn't being read by the spooks.